Yes, it’s finally spring in Northern Vermont — or at least it was yesterday in West Danville, where residents “bought tickets to guess when a cinder block would fall through the ice at a local pond. The cinder block went through … on Thursday at 5:39 a.m.”

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The changing season elsewhere will soon also bring Samhain to Druids Down Under in Australia, New Zealand, South America and South Africa. Can I sense the sacred fires of life at the heart of Samhain, or perceive the Ancestors peering through for our upcoming Mid-Atlantic Gathering Beltane Maypole? (My mother would celebrate her hundredth birthday if she were still incarnate this May.)

Katrina, Mike and me, spring 1999

I look at old pictures like this one, from a “just-pie-us” fundraiser in 1999, at the school where I used to teach. (That’s me on the right.) As both a ghostly image of the past of 20 years ago, a kind of ancestor of our “today selves”, and also a picture filled with the high hilarity and sun-vigor of Beltane, it seems fitting for this season.

Haven’t visited the Beltane Fire Society site recently? Check out the 2019 update!

2 responses to “Local (Northern) Spring, Southern Samhain”

“a kind of ancestor of our “today selves”” I really love this concept. I’ve spent a lot of time recently mentally sifting through the various iterations of me over the years, and I find this a very comforting way to think about it. I’m planning a one day retreat for Beltane – kind of the opposite of what one normally thinks of as Beltane festivity, but such is the life of a solitary practitioner. I think I’ll take all the ancestors of my today self with me and see what we get up to!

Krista, may your Beltane retreat reward you richly! And yes, finding our way as solitaries — no matter our occasional attendance at group events and gatherings — means at least the luxury of “seeing what we (we never really escape all the Others — they’re just furred, finned and leafed) get up to”!